About this work
Its surface illuminated by brightly coloured lanterns, the Grand Canal in Venice is shown here during the night-time celebrations preceding the procession of the Festa del Redentore, an annual feast that celebrates the end of a plague in the sixteenth century. Prendergast was one of a number of American artists who flocked to Italy at the end of the nineteenth century; many of his watercolours reveal the influence of Japanese woodblock prints, apparent here in the stylised patterns of light playing over the dark surface of the water.
(Permanent collection label)